Eidos Interactive PC N/A 5/26/2000

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Enter "The Romero," the acclaimed game designer who’s worked on first-person shooters since the dawn of the genre. Before departing id Software, he contributed his design talents to the success of the DOOM series and, of course, Quake. Now, John Romero sits high atop the ION Tower in Dallas, Texas, as the founder of ION Storm.


And now, marred by controversy, allegations of poor leadership, victim of a vulgar and offensive ad campaign (“John Romero is going to make you his bitch”--conceived by current Gathering of Developers CEO Mike Wilson) that outraged and alienated his once strong fan base, a massive staff turnover and years of delay, John Romero’s first first-person shooter--Daikatana--is in stores.


Daikatana is an epic story-driven first-person shooter set around a fabled magical sword, the “Daikatana.” The game spans four massive episodes, each with a completely different weapon arsenal, bestiary, art and overall look and feel; it's really four games in one. Its episodes range from a gothic, futuristic Kyoto, Japan to Ancient Greece, medieval Norway and San Francisco, circa 2030, and each episode contains upwards of six chapters, which are broken down to four to six levels each; as you can see, it's a very complex game.


Daikatana's powered by id Software’s Quake 2 game engine, but its visuals are a mixed bag. In some episodes, the art, architecture, environments and monsters look wonderful (take the second episode, for instance), but unfortunately, the game starts off in the worst-looking episode of the game--Kyoto, Japan. Its overwhelming mix of overbearing puke green textures are combined with the most heinous abuse of colored lighting effects ever seen in a game to produce garish effects... The Quake II engine just does not lend itself well to an Unreal environment, and the game's downfall could be this collection of confusing, ugly and just plain bad set of levels.